Roofing shingles are formed continuously on an assembly line and need to be cut and stacked in bundles to be packaged and shipped for sale and use. One such stacking apparatus is shown at U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,128 wherein the shingles are passed along a top of a conveyor having a rise in the center thereof and then passed through a star wheel mechanism that flips every other shingle piece to provide a stack of shingles that is rectangular in structure. Since the time of this patent, shingles are now made double wide and split, then positioned in a vertical pair with a thin edge and thick edge of adjacent shingles juxtaposed for stacking rectangular polygon shape.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,390,766 discloses a shingle bundle palletizer with several conveyors. While some prior patents have allegedly disclosed conveyors that operate up to 900 feet per minute, it is typical that present day roofing machine conveyors operate at about 600 feet per minute. At 600 feet per minute, about 3.33 shingles per second for a 36 inch shingle or 300 milliseconds per shingle, are entering into an apparatus that feeds a pair of so-called catchers. The catchers receive, slow down and stop each shingle and position same, either in a stack, or provide for the depositing of each shingle vertically into a stack of such shingles.
Further, present day roofing machines can have a front end which is as much as 70 feet in length from the center of the cutter to the last of the catchers of a double width delivery belt machine.
A need has arisen, not only to increase the possible line speed and shingle construction rate in such machines, such as feeding four stackers from one line and providing a line speed of up to 1,200 feet per minute, but also to do so with a shorter length machine than heretofore known, such as an assembly of just 20 feet in length from the cutter to the last catcher stacker. Thus, not only would the production rate from such roofing machines be increased, but the building space necessary to house such machines may also be made smaller, or such added space used for other purposes.
A need has also developed to provide such a roofing machine catcher stacker that has fewer delivery belt motors, servo driven diverters and drives while providing a faster catcher stacker than heretofore known in the industry.
It is therefore an object of the present invention, generally stated, to provide a new and improved high speed roof shingle making machine catcher stacker having a controlled shingle separation from the cutter portion of such shingle making machinery.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of a roofing shingle machine which has line speeds of up to about 1,200 feet per minute (1,800 feet per minute into the catcher).
Another provision of the present invention is providing a roofing shingle machine catcher stacker that fits within a distance of about 20 feet from the shingle cutter to the last catcher stacker.